Trapped
by Achieving Elysium
Summary: (8) "Tartarus did things to you. They were all trapped, Nico realized. Trapped as a prisoner in their own minds." Explicit language. Post-HoH.


_Tartarus did things to you. They were all trapped, Nico realized. Trapped as a prisoner in their own minds._

_..._

_"Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtaxed."_

_~Oliver Wendell Holmes_

_"Healing takes courage, and we all have courage, even if we have to dig seep to find it."_

_~Tori Amos_

* * *

**It's** PTSD. Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, Chiron had told him. Not that he didn't know. The blasted anxiety disorder. He had it. He'd been there. _No, he was there. _Things differed. He changed. Oh, he knew. Sometimes, he heard it. Heard the blood-curling screams out of nowhere. Only he could hear them. He would lose control; a blade coming at his way, the said person moving out of the way, whenever it was too quiet, he would hear the voices, how when darkness overcame him, cloaked him, like shadow-travelling, he would choke and gasp. It pulled at him. The fear. Sometimes he didn't think. That scared him. That he could hurt someone accidentally. Down..._there..._ all you did was run. And fight. No time for thoughts. It was just blood and fear and dark and run and-_he had to run, he had to get moving. The Doors. He must get to the Doors. Monsters shrieked as they advanced. They formed a circle of beady eyes, sharp claws, gleaming teeth, dank fur. He-_No. He was okay. He was here. _Not there. _Yep. He had PTSD all right.

**So **did Percy and Annabeth. He could tell. They both had dark, haggard looks, and dark, baggy circles under their eyes, and dark, shattered eyes that saw too much, and dark- They had dark everything. He noted, that the streaks were back in their hair and were more pronounced. Sometimes, Annabeth's honey blonde curls seemed to darken to a brown that was streaked with shadows before you blinked and they were back. Percy's skin seemed to wax and pale in the light before you blinked and it was back to tan he'd developed and kept. Their shirts hung, loosely, now seemingly 2 sizes smaller. They were inseparable, clinging to each other like they would die if they were separated. Which would, no doubt, happen. No one laughed at Percy pulling a journal out of nowhere, scribbling in it, and it disappearing, just like no one laughed when Annabeth would suddenly jump up, at per say, dinner, and run somewhere. Percy would follow, and there went the two. Yep. They had PTSD all right.

**Dark **was, in fact, the perfect word. Darkness hung off the trio, darkness was emitted from them, surrounded them, suffocating, intoxicating, _never _entirely gone. Sometimes they would have their happy moments. Nico would have a good night, wake up refreshed, and could continue on with a better beginning. It was mostly dark, _dark, __**dark,**_though. An infectious cloud hung over them; you walked over and it was dark. People did anyways, because they wanted that _dark _to be _light. Happy. _He didn't know if that could happen anymore.

**So **that was their life. Darkness, and screams, and blood, and _run, run, he had to run, the monsters would catch- _and eat, and sleep, and stare all day at a damn phobia. Drowning in it. That damn deep dark, damn it, he was so bad, alliteration happened. And ADHD. Which caused him to think of random things like alliteration, and _what the fuck, he had to go run, run run, and _oh look it's a rainbow and _run. _Fuck life. Hell, being stuck in a- in _hell _was enough, but the plague of fucking demigod side effects just fucking blew the top of the bottle. Once, during dinner, a young camper had asked,"Why are they so sad?" Painfully obvious who it was. Them. Everyone had frozen. Malcolm looked at the kid. "Because," he swallowed,"They're scared and tired and they want things to stop and slow down. " It fit.

**Cold **and dreary fit too. Sometimes little shivers would rack through him. His hands would shake, he'd drop something... Even if it was warm and sunny and that kind of butterflies-and-rainbows-and-unicorns day, he'd walk past something and get that cold, creepy feeling of dread. They also kept weapons, too. He'd see Percy twisting the cap of Riptide like he wanted to open it, Annabeth tapping her dagger against the edge of a table. He did it himself, too, setting his sword on the table or the chair next to him while eating, or something. He knew why. _Helping _defeat Gaea wasn't enough. They wanted to, by themselves, slam her into the ground and hurt her like she did them, and cut and slice... By themselves. And for that feeling of safety. A weapon was a lifeline. You fought for you (or in Percy & Annabeth's case) or for someone else. That was it.

Tartarus did things to you. They were all trapped, Nico realized. Trapped as a prisoner of their own minds. A slave of hallucinations. A victim of nightmares. The prey of flashbacks. They were trapped, and would die of the insanity until they could find the courage. The strength. But until then,

they

were

_trapped._

* * *

Depressing. It hit me out of nowhere. A late-night/afternoon fic.

Hope you liked it. **[If you noticed, the bolded makes a sentence. Something I'd expect one of them to say. [[It's so dark, so cold.]]]**

Night.

AE


End file.
